First Fiction: Monsters

The air was heating up, but suddenly there was a cool breeze, carrying with it a sweet, familiar smell - water! I kept hobbling. Hope renewed, I picked up the pace and kept looking up to the horizon in the hope of spotting where that whiff came from. And there it was! First a slit of it showed around the corner of the hill, then more and more. A lake, or the sea perhaps? I kept hobbling. Trying to pick up the pace, but this made me put more pressure on my foot, and I slowed again.

On the other side of the hill, was an enormous lake. But before even a quarter of it was revealed, however, I stopped suddenly and dropped to my knees. Did I see right? Was this dementia? I had heard of hallucinations, even experienced delusions when I was hit really badly one time with the flu and my fever skyrocketed, but what was this I was seeing? In the lake a black mound rose out like a miniature volcano. Around it the water stirred as if it moved. Then, suddenly rising up out of it came an enormously long limb. The neck of a gigantic creature. Water flowed down off the neck and showered back into the lake. In the mouth of it’s tiny head, weeds dangled and were slowly, and methodically crunched. A gigantic breast of prehistoric time! This I recognised as either a brontosaurus, or one of it’s relatives. It truly was a mammoth creature. As long as one of the longest bridges I had ever driven across, and that was just the parts showing out of the water, there was still a tail under there somewhere. It was as tall as some of the tallest buildings in the city I come from. It was huge!

I straightened my shaking knees and peered over the trees at the lake again. It was still there. It’s thick, long neck now sweeping back down toward the water again. It was no more than a mile away. It stretched down and submerged it’s head back into the water. I started walking again - keeping my eyes fixed on the beast. Coming around the hill some more, and revealing more lake, I saw there were three more in there. All doing pretty much the same thing. I kept walking, sticking close to the trees, assuming that these would offer some form of protection. What protection exactly I didn’t think about at the time, but hopefully some. They took it in turns to survey the surrounding land. Possibly looking for predators. They held their heads up high in the air, and appeared to be sampling the air for a whiff of anything approaching.

I made my way fully to the East side of the hill until the lake was directly ahead of me, then crept back into the trees again and sat down to watch. They were magnificent. Colossal beasts, dipping their heads time and time again to pull up muddy, wet weeds and slurping them down their enormous necks.

Hours went by, and the sweet smell of the water beckoned me, but there was no way I was going down there with those massive units. One snort at me and I’d be flat on my back, let alone if they decided to step on me, or worse. I noticed at the lake’s edge there were signs of insect life, and dragonflies and enormous flying bugs resembling mosquitoes hovered around, flicking off the surface of the lapping water, going about their daily business, totally oblivious to the giant, hulking creatures behind them.

Hours later, the larger of the mammals lifted it’s head into the sky and let out a bellow. It was like a person blowing on a conch shell, but fifty times the volume. It echoed around the hills, and bounced back two or three times. The others looked it’s way and then followed his lead as he started moving his enormous weight toward the far bank. As they rose up out of the water, I caught sight for the first time, of just how big they really were. Their bulk was low slung upon four huge pillars of legs. Their body didn’t really end, but tapered down for tens of metres through the length of their whip-like tails. As they walked, their tails snaked through the air, balancing them. They only took one foot off the ground at a time as they walked, supposedly for balance, or to hold up their bulk.